unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Since its initial publication, “The Business of Venture Capital” has been hailed as the definitive, most comprehensive book on the subject. In its upcoming third edition, this market-leading text explains the multiple facets of the business of venture capital, from raising venture funds, to structuring investments, to generating consistent returns, to evaluating exit strategies.Mahendra Ramsinghani is the founder of Secure Octane, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, which invests in cybersecurity among other sectors. He is also the author of multiple books including “The Resilient Founder,” and “Startup Boards” co-authored with noted VC Brad Feld.Greg and Mahendra dig into everything that makes VCs work in this episode, including what fund managers think about venture capital, betting on humans over ideas, characteristics of a good GP, and the mental health of founders. Episode Quotes:The single biggest problem with venture capital10:51: I think that's the single biggest problem in our businesses: Markets don't evolve or adopt technologies fast enough. Or if they adopt certain technologies, they don't adopt every technology. They’ll pick one, right? So you end up saying: Okay, in this scenario, I was the winner and in this scenario, I lost. And so this is a business where you're constantly being humbled and constantly being reminded that you cannot logically plan the outcomes.What are the key characteristics of a successful venture capitalist?39:06: The fundamental attributes that play out well are curiosity and openness to learning about new trends. And then the second, and the more important, is the ability to take risks within a shorter period of time and make our decisions quickly as opposed to trying to belabor over how the future might play out five years from now. Two metrics in measuring fund performance27:03: What fund managers do, you know, people like me, are giving them the two metrics they want to look at before they start the conversation. So, your IRR, you know, is a time-based sort of metric of your performance. And then the second is your cash on cash, whether you're TVPI (Total Value to Paid In) or multiple of investor capital. So those two tend to have now become industry standards.Show Links:Recommended Resources:John Hagel episode Guest Profile:Contributor’s Profile at ForbesContributor’s Profile at TechCrunchMahendra Ramsinghani on TwitterMahendra Ramsinghani on LinkedInHis Work:Secure Octane InvestmentsStartup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors The Resilient Founder: Lessons in Endurance from Startup EntrepreneursThe Business of Venture Capital: The Art of Raising a Fund, Structuring Investments, Portfolio Management, and Exits (Wiley Finance) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every time we make a choice, our minds go through an elaborate process most of us never even notice. We’re influenced by subtle aspects of the way the choice is presented that often make the difference between a good decision and a bad one. How do we overcome the common faults in our decision-making and enable better choices in any situation? This question and more are answered in our guests latest book, ​​"The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters."Eric Johnson is a faculty member at the Columbia Business School at Columbia University where he is the inaugural holder of the Norman Eig Chair of Business, and Director of the Center for Decision Sciences. His research examines the interface between Behavioral Decision Research, Economics and the decisions made by consumers, managers, and their implications for public policy, markets and marketing. Eric and Greg analyze choice architecture from many angles in this episode, as well as touching on menu science, the problem with alphabetizing, and the impacts of good choice architecture on education. Episode Quotes:How do you know whether someone's made a good decision?53:11: One thing you can do is create the equivalent of a flight simulator. That is, we know a cockpit has a good design because you can land at SFO, you can land at Charles de Gaulle, under different conditions if you do the right thing. Now, one thing I can do is I can say: You have three kids, they go to the doctor this number of times. Can you pick the right health insurance? So I know what you should be doing in that case. And see if you can find it. I called this the decision simulator approach. So in many domains, I may not know what you exactly want, but I can tell you what you need to find and see if you can find it. And that's super helpful.How to overcome bias41:16: Fluency is the way you get around present bias. You make the right behavior very easy and reduce the barriers to entry.Is education the key to regulating choice architecture?44:07: Education helps, but it can't be the entire solution, and it's very expensive. Not just in the kinds of places that you and I teach, but even in grammar school, if you're teaching about Choice Architecture, which I think you should, you're doing less on other subjects. So there's always:Is education the most effective way of doing things? At the same time, I think the notion of defaults is a really simple thing to teach. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Peter Ubel episodeBarry Schwartz episodeGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Columbia Business SchoolProfessional Profile at TIIA InstituteEric Johnson on TwitterEric Johnson on LinkedInEric Johnson on DLDConferenceHis Work:Eric Johnson on Google ScholarThe Elements of Choice WebsiteNeuroeconomics: Chapter 3. Computational and Process Models of Decision Making in Psychology and Behavioral Economics Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dr. Robert Cialdini has spent his entire career conducting scientific research on what leads people to say “Yes” to requests and appeals. The results of his research, his ensuing articles, and New York Times bestselling books have earned him an acclaimed reputation as a respected scientist and engaging storyteller.His books, including “Influence” and “Pre-Suasion,” have sold more than 7-million copies in 44 different languages. Robert is also the Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.In this episode, Robert joins Greg to talk about what's changed in the 30 years between his published books; authority & credibility; the predominance of fear in our culture; and how they each teach ethics in their business courses.Episode Quotes:What is the importance of social scientists observing phenomena in the field? 6:49: I think it's crucially important for a couple of reasons. One is in the laboratory; we control or eliminate all sources that may affect our data except the ones that we are studying. That's what we try to do. Those may be the things that exist in the natural environment that could influence the effects, but we don't register their influence because we've eliminated them in the hothouse of the experimental lab. So, that's one thing. The other is we can see the power of the effects that we find in the field because if they are successful, they have overcome all of this myriad of other influences that are working on people—making decisions, making choices, in everyday situations to transcend all that ground noise that's going on, that could otherwise eliminate the effect if the effect wasn't strong enough to overpower those influences.How can we manage the constant barrage of appeals for our attention?26:50: There's one strategy that is the most powerful in rebalancing the scales against the larger impact that a salient argument has. And that is to consider the opposite.Influence as a leadership tool47:22: For leadership, you want influence in the long term. You want to create an aura that allows people to feel comfortable moving in your direction, even though they don't have to make a purchase or anything, but they're willing to go along with your preferences because you've established yourself as a credible source of authority for them.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Daniel KahnemanGuest Profile:Professional Profile at Arizona State UniversityRobert Cialdini WebsiteRobert Cialdini on TwitterRobert Cialdini on LinkedInHis Work:Influence At WorkInfluence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of PersuasionPre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and PersuadeThe small BIG: small changes that spark big influenceYes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lydia Pyne’s work may loosely be called history, but it's really a combination of the sciences and the humanities. It's a reflection on how we make sense of ourselves and our past.Lydia is a writer and historian, interested in the history of science and material culture. She has degrees in history and anthropology and a PhD in biology (history and philosophy of science) from Arizona State University. Her field and archival work has ranged from South Africa, Ethiopia, and Uzbekistan, as well as the American Southwest.She is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and her books include “Endlings: Fables for the Anthropocene” and “Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff.”She shares with Greg this episode how stories motivate us to actions, how nature documentaries need to include a few lies, categorizing museums, fake artifacts & art, and how the element of time can make us rethink authenticity and change. Episode Quotes:How material and medium play a significant role in how we respond to authenticity26:46: It makes me wonder how much the material and the medium drive how we respond to challenges to authenticity. We have different ways and different expectations of that, where if you were to go to, say, a science museum and see a T.Rex skeleton and to sort of say, Okay, this is conveying knowledge about the past, and this is telling me things that are true, and I’m going to take this away. I think it makes a lot of sense to have. Ookay, this is a replica. This is what we fill in and our best guess. And oh, this is a cast of the actual fossil. But we wanted to be really clear, so to me, I see that there isn’t a blanket statement that we can sort of apply to all material culture, but that it varies. Our tolerance and expectations change over time and vary depending on the medium.20:39: I love this idea that something that starts out as fake in the early parts of its life could be made authentic and could be made real given enough time.On defining endlings04:49: So an endling is the last known individual of a species before the species is declared extinct. And it seems like such a straightforward definition, like, nope, it's the last one. Once this one individual dies, then the species is declared extinct. But the more I try to hone in on and to think about the last of this species, the more I realize that it's very difficult to count the last of something when the category that it is the last of is so slippery, tricky, and historically contingent, to begin with.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Johan Beringer's lying StonesBeth Shapiro episodeGuest Profile:Lydia Pyne’s WebsiteLydia Pyne on TwitterLydia Pyne on Talks at GoogleHer Work:Articles on JSTOR DailyArticles on GlasstireEndlings: Fables for the Anthropocene (Forerunners: Ideas First)Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social NetworkGenuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff (Bloomsbury Sigma)Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human FossilsBookshelf (Object Lessons)The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Innovation seems to occur at uneven rates across different countries. At a time when we’re so intimately connected in all fields and industries, its interesting that there are still such vastly different kinds of technology and innovation happening at the same time all over the world. Dr. Mark Zachary Taylor, formerly a solid-state physicist, now specializes in S&T politics and policy, political economy, the American presidency, and comparative politics. In his research, he tries to understand the sources of national economic competitiveness. In his book, “The Politics of Innovation,” he seeks to explain why some countries are better than others at science and technology. He currently studies the role of the US presidency in short-run economic performance, as well as an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology.Following the ideas of Cardwell’s Law, Greg and Zach discuss the uneven distribution of innovation globally, how and why we got to this place, and the role of government investments.Episode Quotes:There’s a lot of politics in physics(02:49) As a physicist, you're trained that science is all about efficiency and coming up with the right research and methods. But the deeper you got into it, you realize there was a lot of politics that went into deciding which were the right questions to answer, which were the right methodologies that you would use, and which labs got the funding or not in order to pursue these, and then which got published or not. There was a political aspect to it. And this wasn't being picked up on the sort of economic side, on the politics side.What makes a great politician?(49:15) I think we, as voters, should always be on the lookout for politicians who have that vision and who are skilled at politics, and are thoughtful about the policy. If you can combine those three, you've got some winners.The importance of competition on innovation(13:04) Whether it's for the individual scientists and engineers who are training or for the companies that they're going to wind up working for or even creating the product spaces, you've got to have that element of competition, or you're going to wind up with this protective turf building. That's going to stagnate over time.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Georgia Institute of Technology Mark Zachary Taylor’s WebsiteMark Zachary Taylor on TwitterMark Zachary Taylor on LinkedInHis Work:Mark Zachary Taylor on Google ScholarThe Politics of Innovation: Why Some Countries Are Better Than Others at Science and Technology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You may not believe it, but there is a link between our current political instability and your childhood attachment to teddy bears. There's also a reason why children in Asia are more likely to share than their western counterparts and why the poor spend more of their income on luxury goods than the rich. Or why your mother is more likely to leave her money to you than your father. What connects these things?The answer is our need for ownership. How does our urge to acquire control our behaviour, even the way we vote? And what can we do about it?Bruce Hood explores these questions in his latest book, “Possessed: Why We Want More Than We Need.” Bruce is currently Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, with a diverse range of research interests including the origins of supernatural beliefs, intuitive theory formation, object representation, spatial cognition, inhibitory control and general cognitive development.He chats with Greg this episode about the concept of ownership, the psychological relationship we have with our possessions, Essentialism, and possessions vs experiences.Episode Quotes:The distinction between ownership and possession07:08: So there's a distinction between possession and ownership, which it's important to draw because ownership is a social convention. And I would argue you don't see any evidence of ownership in the animal kingdom, but plenty of evidence of territorialism and possessions.The principle of establishing ownership17:23: So when people take a piece of writing, or they take a tune and modify it and say, oh, it's different, then they gotta argue, well, to what extent does that constitute an original piece of effort?So it is actually quite nuanced even in the adult world, but the basic origin of it is yes. If you put effort into transforming, constructing, and creating something, that should default with you.On defining the essence21:27: Whenever we form an emotional attachment or have an emotional perspective on something, we imbue it with a metaphysical property of some unique feature which characterizes it. And that's called the essence.The importance of control for humans46:38: The perception of control is really important for humans to the extent that when they're uncertain or stressed, they'll look for patterns in the world to try regaining control. And that's where superstitions arise because we don't know what's controlling.Show Links:Recommended Resources:unSILOed: Ownership: What It Is, and What It Isn't feat. Michael Heller unSILOed:The Power of Social Pressure feat. Robert FrankGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of BristolContributor’s Profile at Closer To TruthBruce Hood’s WebsiteBruce Hood on TwitterBruce Hood on LinkedInBruce Hood on InstagramBruce Hood on Talks at GoogleBruce Hood on TedXSouthHamptonHis Work:Possessed: Why We Want More Than We NeedThe Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates IdentityThe Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural BeliefsSuperSense: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Having a background in planetary science gives our guest an interesting perspective on the world. In his work, Lewis can tie together things like the existence of humanity, and how the human experience has been impacted or even made possible by things like the movement of the tectonic plates and the great oxidation event.Lewis Dartnell is a research scientist, and author based in London, UK. His books include “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch,” and “Origins: How the Earth Made Us.”He is currently a Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster, after having spent some time at the UK Space Agency.Lewis sits down with Greg to talk about building seed banks and prepping for the future, the scientific method, what a manual for civilization might look like, and how to change people's perspectives on the overwhelming weight of history of our species.Episode Quotes:On terraforming Mars43:07: So when people talk about terraforming Mars or making the Martian environment much more like the earth is today. We're not really talking about creating something new, but we're basically talking about turning back the hands of time, turning back Martian history to its primordial state when it did have a much more habitable environment.Our planet’s problem is the one we created48:25: The problem we're finding with our planet's environments and global climate is a problem that we created as an unintended consequence of the solution we found to a previous global problem, which was energy scarcity.Africa as a place of greatest genetic diversity34:08: The vast majority of human evolution, human history has been in Africa. And that is where we find the greatest genetic diversity across the entire species is still in our home stomping grounds in the African continent. And there's actually very, very little genetic diversity across people living everywhere else in the world.Show Links:Recommended Resources:The-knowledge.orgConnecticut Yankee goes to king Arthur's court book by Mark TwainThe Leftovers by Tom PerottaJoseph TainterunSILOed: In Defense of Genetic Engineering feat. Beth Shapiro Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of WestminsterLewis Dartnell’s WebsiteLewis Dartnell on LinkedInLewis Dartnell on TwitterLewis Dartnell on FacebookLewis Dartnell on TEDTalkLewis Dartnell on Talks at Google | Origins Lewis Dartnell on Talks at Google | The KnowledgeHis Work:Article on AeonOrigins: How the Earth Made UsThe Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from ScratchMy Tourist Guide to the Solar SystemLife in the Universe: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides series- Astrobiology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For a podcast called unSILOed, you really can’t think of a more perfect guest than John Hennessy. From being a founder of a company, to a scholar, to a book author and an administrator, John has straddled many a silo in his career. John Hennessy is an American computer scientist, academician and businessman who serves as Chairman of Alphabet Inc. Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems Inc. as well as Atheros and served as the tenth President of Stanford University. A pioneer in computer architecture, Hennessy joined Stanford’s faculty in 1977 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering.John joins Greg this episode to discuss his multifaceted resume, including the tension between undergraduate & graduate education being in the same buildings, the secret ingredient of university research, and the challenges facing deans & administrative staff in our current cultural climate. Episode Quotes:John’s definition of humility6:09: Humility was about both realizing that I was able to be successful because I stood on the shoulders of many other people who had contributed along the way, both to my education and to my opportunity to do this, but also to recognize that you're not the expert on everything and bringing in experts, people who know the field is crucial to building a team that can be successfulWhat academic leadership needs to learn from corporations12:50: One of the challenges you face in academic leadership is that we do not do a particularly good job of preparing people for succession and management, and moving up the chain, unlike corporations, do a much better job in terms of preparing their leaders to take on bigger roles.How can universities give more access to education?49:46: Right now, we have far too many students who don't graduate college. Who start and don't graduate, not at great institutions like Berkeley or Stanford. You know, the national graduation rate for full-time students is about 55 to 60%. Well, that means you've got a lot of students who took on debt and didn't get a degree to finish it. That's a shared responsibility. It's clear that there are issues that are on the students, but it's also the institution's responsibility. And right now, we put all the burden on the student. Right? And why don't institutions have some responsibility when students default on debt?Because most of the students who default either didn't graduate or got a degree that did not prepare them for a career. So, the institution should be taking a larger responsibility for that. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The minute you walk into an elevator, everybody is immediately sizing up each other to figure out who is high and low status. When you're driving down the road, you can't help but think that someone's trying to “out status” you by accelerating past you or cutting you off. Status is everywhere, even if we're not conscious of it. Will Storr is an author, and former photographer and journalist. His books include, “The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it,” “Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us,” and the novel “The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone: The Secret Ingredient of Unforgettable Food Is Suffering.”He and Greg chat in this episode about all of the things we humans use to rate each other's status, including humiliation, the exploitation of status on social media, the cult of Crossfit, and the problem with relentlessly encouraging high self esteem in our children.Episode Quotes:Status is a psychological nutrient for our bodies 9:36: One of the ways I think about status is it's a social nutrient. It’s like an essential nutrient that we need, but it's a psychological nutrient rather than one for our bodies. And, when we don't get that nutrient, we begin to suffer very badly.Humiliation drives people to be cruel10:46: Humiliation is a sudden and painful public loss of status that drives people to cruel and evil acts. And it even affects us physically.Social media as a status generating machine19:20: Social media has become universally so huge all over the world because it's a status-generating machine. Billions of people who live otherwise kind of relatively ordinary lives can go on social media, and they can earn status. They can show off their possessions or their political beliefs, attack other people, and play these status games. Social media has created all this status where there wasn't any kind of status beforehand.Morality is an aspect of our shared imagination50:05: You can't see morality under a microscope. It's not a scientific thing that exists in the world in a material way. We all decide it's the rules of our game. So what happens is that we have our own moral laws and our moral symbolic beliefs. But when another group has a different set of moral beliefs, we take that as an attack on our sense of status, like our beliefs are often our criteria for claiming status.Guest Profile:Professional Profile at The GuardianSpeaker’s Profile at London Speaker BureauWill Storr WebsiteWill Storr on LinkedInWill Storr on TwitterWill Storr on YoutubeWill Storr on InstagramHis Work:The Science of Storytelling LIVE!The Status Game: How Social Position Governs EverythingThe Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them BetterSelfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to UsThe Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of ScienceThe Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of ScienceThe Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone Will Storr Vs. The Supernatural: One man's search for the truth about ghosts  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, Rick Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. From being an activist in Chicago back in the day, to his published works, Rick truly understands the longstanding roots of residential segregation in the United States, and how it continues to evolve.  But there is still some confusion about the origins of segregation and how it affects us, from our neighborhoods to our universities and everywhere in between. Rick is a professor of law at UCLA, an economist, and an author of  “Moving Toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing,” and “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It.”Greg and Rick dive deep into segregation in this episode, discussing what really draws people to certain neighborhoods, the disappearance of ethnic enclaves, trends toward greater integration efforts, and getting rid of racial and legacy preferences.Episode Quotes:Why do academic institutions ignore mismatch?4:38: [Academic] mismatch is clearly a big problem. And the real frustration here is that our academic institutions have just ignored it. They're afraid to take on something that's politically sensitive.On economic segregation13:40: Economic segregation is a problem. But, it's wrong to think that we're gonna solve racial segregation by doing that stuff. And we tend to put a lot of political capital, as we’ll get to when we talk about affirmative action. We tend to put large amounts of political capital into strategies without thinking through in advance: Is this actually going to solve the problem we're trying to solve?Social mismatch37:47: There's a phenomenon we call: "social mismatch." So you might say, well, even given this academic mismatch, this is a price that we're willing to pay because we want to create these integrated campuses. And I think that's wrong for a couple of other reasons, but the key problem is that it endures social mismatch.Show Links:Recommended Resources:“Why Poor Families Move (And Where They Go)” - study by Ross Chetti and Stephanie DeLuca“Outliers” by Malcolm GladwellGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at UCLA LawRick Sander on LinkedInHis Work:Moving toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair HousingMismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.